E459 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDDbiaaTflD 




_ o • * - .G^ \i5. 
































>^'^ V.s'^^ 




^-^ *-*^% ^ ^^ ♦^ 




•^w*" •* 




^ 4.' 










a" '^<. •'f-T-^G*^ V*^'???^*^^ %-'f.T** 0*-^ '^ 

\^ 'V*'^^\^'«'^ %''^***A?'' "V*^^*.^^ *\.''^**' 






• '^ A* •t^ 






U ^ •'^ 












,\ \>.^*" 



•• %A 



•^v.^'^ 













- V^^' 













9^^ 














*v^*' 



Commandery of the State of 
Missouri 

Military Order of the Loyal Legion 
APRIL 6, 1912 



"LEST WE FORGET" 



BY 

Companion Captain William R. Hodges 




WOODWARD & TIERNAN PRINTING COMPANY 
SAINT LOUIS 






Gift 

JUN 1 nil 



o 
A> 

Comparatively few of the men who fought on either side during the mighty 
conflict from 1861 to 1865 had a clear comprehension of the real issues involved. 
We of the North would have spurned the idea that in reality we were fighting to 
exterminate slavery; while the poor whites of the South, who formed most of the 
armies of the Confederacy, would have as indignantly denied that they were 
fighting solely for its preservation. They failed utterly to recognize the fact 
that it was a slaveholders' war, instigated by an aristocratic oligarchy which 
degraded labor to menial service and closed the avenues of advancement to those 
outside of their own class, as we failed to recognize that Union was impossible 
until slavery was extinguished. It has taken nearly half a century for us of the 
North to realize the astounding fact that a few hundred thousand slaveholders 
practically dominated this nation from the adoption of the Constitution down to 
the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1861. As we study the 
political history of our country the most surprising fact of all was the complacent 
subserviency of the Northern people in submitting to their arrogant demands, 
often accompanied by threats of secession, until the enactment of the fugitive 
slave law of 1850, and its interpretation by a pro-slavery Supreme Court in 1857, 
roused the dormant self-respect of the Northern people to meet the issue, "all 
slave or all free," which, although as I have said, we did not realize it at the time, 
was really the issue in the Presidential campaign of 1860. 

Alexander H. Stephens was the most far-sighted statesman of the South, and 
in attempting to stem the tide of secession, which he foresaw could only bring 
disaster, pointed to the fact that they had practically ruled the nation and could 
continue to do so by remaining in the Union. In the Georgia Secession Convention, 
January 31, 1861, he spoke as follows: "This step once taken can never be 
recalled, and all the baleful and withering consequence that must follow will rest 
on this convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our 
beloved South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably 
invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden 
down by the murderous soldiery, and the fiery car of war sweeping over our land; 
our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon 
us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? and who but him 
who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly 
think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the 
present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming 
time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now 
propose to perpetrate. 

"Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reason you can give 
that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments — what reason you can give 
to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us? What reason 
you can give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm 
and deliberate judges in the ease. To what cause or one overt act can you name 
or point, on which to rest the plea of Justification? What right has the North 
assailed? What interests of the South have been invaded? What justice has 
been denied? What claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can 



either of you today name one government act of wrong, deliberately and purposely 
done by the government at Washington, of which the South has a right to com- 
plain? I challenge the answer! 

"On the other hand, let me show the facts of which I wish you to judge, and 
I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as 
records authentic in the history of our country. Believe me, gentlemen, I am 
not here the advocate of the North; but I am here the friend, the firm friend and 
lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly 
and faithfully for your, mine and every other man's interest, the words of truth 
and soberness. 

"When we of the South demanded the slave trade, or the importation of 
Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty 
years? When we asked a three-fifths representation in Congress for our slaves, 
was it not granted? When we asked and demanded the return of any fugitive 
from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it 
not incorporated in the Constitution, and again ratified and strengthened in the 
fugitive slave law of 1850? 

"But, do you reply that in many instances they have violated this compact 
and have not been faithful to their engagements? As individuals and local com- 
munities they have done so, but not by the sanction of the Government for that 
has always been true to Southern interests. Again, gentlemen, look at another 
fact. When we have asked that more territory should be added, that we might 
spread the institution of slavery, have they not yielded to our demands in giving 
us Louisiana, Florida and Texas, out of which four States have been carved, and 
ample territory for four more to be added in due time? If you, by this unwise 
and impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and perhaps by it lose all and have 
your last slave wrenched from you by stern military rule, as in South America 
and Mexico, or the vindictive decree of emancipation which may reasonably be 
expected to follow. 

"But again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our 
relation to the General Government? We have always had the control of it, and 
can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a 
majority of the Presidents chosen from the South, as well as the control and 
management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of 
Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the executive depart- 
ment. So of the Judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the 
South, and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial 
business has arisen in the free States, yet a majority of the Court has always been 
from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation 
oj the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally 
watchful to guard our interests in the legislative branch of the Government. In 
choosing the Presidents pro tern of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their 
eleven; Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three and they twelve. While 
the majority of the Representatives, from their greater population, have always 
been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, 
to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have 
we had less control in every other department of the General Government. Attor- 
ney Generals we have had fourteen, while the North has had but five. Foreign 
ministers we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of 
the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the free 
States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principal 
Embassies so as to secure the world markets for our cotton, tobacco and sugar 



on the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher oflScers of 
both the army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers were drawn 
from the North. Equally so of clerks, auditors and comptrollers filling the 
executive; the records show for the last fifty years that of the three thousand thus 
employed we have had more than two-thirds, while we have but one-third of the 
white population of the republic. 

"Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars you 
must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your sons and 
brothers slain in battle and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambi- 
tion — and for what, we ask again? Is it for the overthrow of the American 
Government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their 
sweat and blood and founded on the broad principles of right, justice and 
humanity? And, as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before and 
which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statemen and patriots in 
this and other lands, that it is the best and freest Government — the most equal 
in its right — the most just in its decisions — the most lenient in its measures, and 
the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of 
Heaven ever shone upon. 

"Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, under 
which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century — in which we have 
gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the 
elements of peril were around us, with peace and tranquility accompanied with 
unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed — is the height of madness, folly and 
wickedness to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote." 

Concessions were made to slaveholders from the very beginning of the Nation. 
Jefferson, in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, in the indict- 
ment of King George III, used the following language: "He has waged cruel 
war against human nature itself, violating the most sacred rights of life and 
liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and 
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death 
in the transportation thither, * * * determined to keep an open market where 
men should be bought and sold; he has prostituted his negative for suppressing 
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce." At 
the demand of Georgia and South Carolina, this part of the indictment was struck 
out. Washington was in full sympathy with Jefferson in his abhorrence of 
slavery, although a slave owner himself. At a Fairfax County Convention at 
which he presided, before the Revolution, it was resolved that "no slaves ought to 
be imported into any of the British Colonies," and Washington "expressed the 
most earnest wish to see an entire stop forever put to such a wicked, cruel and 
unnatural trade." The invention of the cotton gin in 1793, made the cultivation 
of cotton by slave labor highly profitable, and the same year Congress enacted 
a fugitive slave law which required State magistrates, who held office solely by 
State law, to sit in judgment in fugitive slave cases, and to aid in returning to 
slavery negroes claimed as slaves by owners from foreign States. In 1807 the 
(Tnited States prohibited the importation of slaves into any of the States, and in 
1820 slavetraders were declared pirates and punishable as such. A "Declaration 
against the Slave Trade" of the world was signed at the Congress of the Powers 
at Vienna in 1815, and repeated by the Congress of Paris at the end of the 
Napoleonic Wars. The same year at the Treaty of Ghent it was declared by 
Great Britain and the United States, that: "Whereas, the traffic in slaves is 
irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice," the two countries 
stipulated to use their best endeavors to abolish it. The extension of slave 



territory increased the demand for slaves and there was a revival of the slave 
trade. It was principally carried on in vessels under the United States flag, and 
the right of search was denied to foreign vessels engaged in suppressing it. The 
fact that the navy had been under the control of the slave power almost continu- 
ously from the adoption of the Constitution may account for the fact stated by 
DuBois in his History of the Slave Trade, that during eighteen months of the 
years 1859-60 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been fitted out in New 
York harbor, and that these alone transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually 
to America. 

The first threats of disunion if slavery were interfered with came from the 
delegate from Missouri when during the session of 1818-1819 application was made 
for admission of Missouri as a sla,ve State, and Mr. Tallmadge of New York offered 
to amend the bill by providing that all children born in the State after its admis- 
sion should be free at twenty-five years of age. A fierce contest ensued which 
finally resulted in a proviso or compromise prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30' in 
the Louisiana acquisition except in Missouri. Jefferson realized what compromise 
with the spirit of aggression of the slave power meant in the future and he wrote: 
"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me 
with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union." Clay, writing of the heated 
debate, said: "The words Civil War and disunion are uttered almost without 
emotion." 

In November, 1832, a convention of the people of South Carolina was held 
and an ordinance was passed declaring the tariff acts of Congress "null and void," 
not binding on the State, and that under them no duties should be paid in the 
State after February 1, 1833. Medals were struck inscribed "John C. Calhoun, 
first President of the Southern Confederacy." President Jackson called it treason 
and prepared to enforce the law and incidentally to hang Mr. Calhoun if resist- 
ance were offered. As they knew that he meant what he said the nullification 
ordinance was repealed. The virus of secession remained until burned out by 
the fires of Civil War. When Sam Houston's Republic of Texas applied for admis- 
sion to the Union as a slave State, and with a constitution prohibiting the emanci- 
pation of slaves, and authorized their importation into Texas, there was mild 
protest, but it was finally agreed that new States lying north of latitude 36° 30' 
should be admitted without slavery, which satisfied the Northern "Dough Faces," 
and Texas was admitted. It was afterwards found that the northern boundary 
of Texas was not within 200 miles of 36° 30'. The war with Mexico was brought 
on solely to acquire more slave territory, but by a fortunate combination of cir- 
cumstances not a foot of the acquired territory was ever polluted by slavery. 
After General Taylor was made President his Southern friends demanded his aid 
to plant slavery in California, but he declined and declared that California should 
be free. 

The struggle in Congress over the disposition of the Territory of Nebraska 
culminated in the series of events which led to the formation of the Republican 
party, the election of Mr. Lincoln and secession. This territory embraced at that 
time what is now the States of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Mon- 
tana and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. 

Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, 
opened a veritable Pandora box of evil portent by making a report embodying 
new constitutional theories and reopening questions supposed to have been settled. 
It stated in brief "That the Constitution secures to every citizen an inalienable 
right to move into any of the territories with his property, of whatever kind and 
description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of the law." A bill 



accompanying the report required that any part of the Nebraska Territory admitted 
as a State "shall be received with or without slavery as Its Constitution may 
prescribe at the time of admission." This was a practical abrogation of the Mis- 
souri Compromise, but to leave no question, he presented a substitute for his 
original bill wherein it was provided that the restriction of that compromise "was 
superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, and is hereby declared 
inoperative." After a long and fierce struggle the bill passed and was approved 
by the President in May, 1854. In January, 1854, an "Appeal of the Independent 
Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States" was published, signed 
by S. P. Chase, Charles Sumner, J. R. Glddlngs, Edward Wade, Gerrltt Smith, 
and Alexander De Witt, which declared that the new Nebrasl^a bill would "open 
all the unorganized territories of the Union to the progress of slavery," and a 
plot to convert them "into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and 
slaves to the exclusion of emigrants from the Old World and free laborers from 
our own States." The Northern people were at last thoroughly aroused. It was 
realized that a new party must be formed with the distinctive purpose of resisting 
the further aggressions of slavery. A meeting of citizens of all parties was held 
at Ripon, Wisconsin, where I lived at the beginning of the war and from whence 
I entered the service. The name suggested was "Republican." A few weeks 
afterwards a convention was held at Jackson, Michigan, and the Republican party 
was formally launched upon the ocean of national politics. Before the convention 
adjourned a full State ticket was nominated. Three of the candidates were Free- 
soilers, five were Whigs, and two Anti-Nebraska Democrats. State conventions 
were held In Wisconsin, Vermont, Ohio and Indiana. The Anti-Nebraska Peoples' 
party carried Ohio by 75,000 majority and elected every representative to Congress, 
they also carried Indiana by 13,000 majority. In New York the same party 
elected 27 out of a total of 33 representatives in Congress. Subservience to the 
slave power which had hitherto dominated the Nation was at an end. 

It is well that we should now have a definite understanding of the Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850. I quote from General Keifer's "Slavery and Four Years of 
War": "United States commissioners were provided to act instead of State magis- 
trates, on whom jurisdiction was attempted to be conferred by the act of 1793. 
Eo: parte testimony was made sufficient to determine the identity of the negro 
claimed, and the affidavit of an agent or attorney was made sufficient. The alleged 
fugitive was not permitted under any circumstances to testify. He was denied 
the right of trial by jury. The cases were to be heard in a summary manner. 
The claimant was authorized to use all necessary force to remove the fugitive 
adjudged a slave. All process of any court or judge was forbidden to molest the 
claimant, his agent or attorney, in carrying away the adjudged slave. United 
States Marshals and their deputies were authorized to summon bystanders as a 
posse comitatus; and all good citizens were commanded, by the act, to aid and 
assist in the proper and efficient execution of the law; all under heavy penalty 
for falling to do so. The officers were liable, in a civil suit, for the value of the 
negro if he escaped. Heavy fine and imprisonment was to be Imposed for hinder- 
ing or preventing the arrest, or for rescuing or attempting to rescue, or for har- 
boring or concealing the fugitive, and, if any person was found guilty of causing 
his escape, a further fine of $1,000 by way of civil damages to the owner. In case 
the commissioner adjudged the negro was the claimant's slave, his fee was fixed 
at $10.00, and if he discharged the negro it was only $5.00. The claimant had a 
right, in case of apprehended danger, to require the officer arresting the fugitive 
to remove him to the State whence he fled, with authority to employ as many 



persons to aid him as he might deem necessary, the expense to be paid out of the 
United States Treasury." 

On March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan was inaugurated President, the 
famous Dred Scott decision was rendered by Chief Justice Taney of Maryland, 
and concurred in by Justices Wayne of Georgia, Catron of Tennessee, Daniel of 
Virginia, Campbell of Alabama, Grier of Pennsylvania, and Nelson of New York. 
Justices McLean of Ohio, and Curtis of Massachusetts, dissented on all points. 
I will quote two paragraphs of the decision: "The Constitution of the United 
States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to 
protect It. And Congress can not exercise any more authority over property of 
that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other 
kind." "The act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a citizen of the United States 
from taking with him his slaves when he removes to the territory in question to 
reside, is an exercise of authority over private property which is not warranted by 
the Constitution — and the removal of the plaintiff, by his owner, to that territory, 
gave him no title to freedom." Of this it has been said, "Thus the highest 
and most august judicial tribunal of this country pronounced doctrines abhorrent 
to the age, overthrowing the acts and practices of the fathers and framers of the 
Republic, and pronouncing the Ordinance of 1787, in so far as it restricted human 
slavery, and all like enactments as from the beginning, unconstitutional. The 
court invaded the express powers of Congress granted to it by the Constitution 
respecting the "Territory or other property belonging to the United States." It 
set aside the Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the First Congress under 
the Constitution, and its slavery restriction clause was enforced, without question 
by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Jackson and their admin- 
istrations. Also the Missouri Compromise which had stood unassailed for more 
than a third of a century Polk and his Cabinet approved the Oregon bill pro- 
hibiting slavery, and Pierce and his administration approved the extension of the 
same prohibition over Washington Territory. The pro-slavery Supreme Court, 
selected, as Mr. Stephens declared, "to guard against any interpretation of the 
Constitution unfavorable to us," clothed only with judicial power, entered the 
political field, and attempted to read into the Constitution the theory promulgated 
by John C. Calhoun, that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the terri- 
tories. If as this decision states "the Constitution of the United States recognizes 
slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it," why should 
not the slaveholders' property be protected in Massachusetts or Illinois as well 
as in the territories? It is true that such a theory was not promulgated, but if 
demanded by the slave power, a pliant court would so decide. 

This was foreshadowed by Mr. Lincoln in his memorable speech at Springfield 
in September, 1858. He said: "If we could first know where we are and whither 
we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now 
far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and 
confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation 
of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 
In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this government can not 
endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
solved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advo- 



cates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all States, old as 
well as new, North as well as South." 

President Buchanan was completely under the influence of the slave power. The 
admission of Kansas was a burning issue and Buchanan did all in his power to 
foist a fraudulent Constitution adopted by a rump convention of slaveholders from 
Missouri upon the people of that territory. 

Mr. Douglas refused to be a party to the scheme and denounced it severely 
in the Senate chamber. Buchanan was furious at the stand taken by Douglas and 
said to him: "Mr. Douglas, I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet 
differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed." Douglas 
replied in an emphatic manner: "Mr. President, I wish you to remember that 
General Jackson is dead." 

It is almost impossible at this time, nearly half a century after the emanci- 
pation proclamation, when slavery is universally admitted to be a monstrous 
wrong, degrading both to master and slaves, to realize that all over the North the 
word Abolitionist was a term of vile reproach. That the public expression of anti- 
slavery sentiments was met with bowlings, revilings and rotten eggs. In 1832, 
Elijah P. Lovejoy, a young Congregational minister, came to St. Louis from Maine 
and established an Orthodox Protestant newspaper. He published something to 
the effect that intemperance and slavery were not conducive to godliness. As a 
consequence his establishment was destroyed and he was driven from the city. 
He located at Alton and made public the same sentiments. He was told to move 
01). and failing to do so his presses were a second time destroyed by a mob. He 
resolved to renew his establishment, and with a few friends stood to arms to 
defend his right of free speech and his property, when he was shot dead by pro- 
slavery ruffians. No merited justice was ever meted out to his murderers, nor 
restitution for his property to his family. Posterity erected a monument to his 
memory. It is a conservative estimate when I say that scarcely more than one 
person out of a thousand in the North was an aggressive abolitionist, one who 
favored the abolition of slavery at all hazards. There was no disposition to meddle 
with the system in the slave States. They had conceded to the South a representa- 
tion in the House of Representatives based on three-fifths of their slaves, but the 
time had come when they proposed that no more slave States should be made from 
the territories. 

Ruffianism was rampant during the discussion of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. 
Charles Sumner made a powerful and intensely bitter speech in the Senate, entitled 
"The Crime Against Kansas." He made a stinging reference to South Carolina 
and Senator Butler from that State for championship of human wrongs. I quote 
from "Rhode's History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850": "Two 
days after this exciting debate (May 22) when the Senate at the close of a short 
session adjourned, Sumner remained in the chamber, occupied in writing letters. 
Becoming deeply engaged, he drew his armchair close to his desk, bent over his 
writing, and while in this position was approached by Brooks, a representative 
from South Carolina and a kinsman of Senator Butler. Brooks, standing before 
and directly over him, said: "I have read your speech over twice carefully. It is 
a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As he 
pronounced the last word, he hit Sumner on the head with his cane with the force 
that a dragoon would give to a sabre blow. Sumner was more than six feet in 
height and of powerful frame, but penned under his desk he could offer no resist- 
ance, and Brooks continued the blows on his defenseless head. The cane broke, 
but the South Carolinan went on beating the victim with the butt. The first 



blows stunned and blinded Sumner, but instinctively and with powerful effort he 
wrenched the desk from its fastenings, stood up, and with spasmodic and widely 
directed efforts attempted unavailingly to protect himself. Brooks took hold of 
him, and, while he was reeling and staggering about, struck him again and again. 
The assailant did not desist until his arm was seized by one who rushed to the 
spot to stop the assault. At that moment Sumner, reeling, staggered backwards 
and sideways, fell to the floor bleeding profusely and covered with blood." It w^s 
more than three years before Sumner was able to resume his seat in the Senate. 
At the North, the assault was denounced as brutal and cowardly. At the South, 
Brooks was lauded as a hero. On a vote of expulsion from the House but one 
Southerner voted in the affirmative. Senator Wilson, Sumner's colleague, said in 
the Senate: "Sumner was stricken down on this floor by a brutal, murderous and 
cowardly assault." Butler cried: "You are a liar." Brooks challenged Wilson to a 
duel, which Wilson declined in a dignified letter, repeating the words he had used. 
Burlingame of Massachusetts, denounced the assault in the House, and he, too, was 
challenged by Brooks. Burlingame promptly accepted the challenge, and Canada 
was named as the place of meeting. This Brooks declined, claiming that he would 
not be permitted to reach Canada in safety. At one time several Northern Repre- 
sentatives and Senators made a compact that the next time one of them was insulted 
they would carry the quarrel to a coffin. Potter of Wisconsin accepted a challenge 
and named bowie knives as the weapons. The challenger declined the terms as 
unchivalrous. 

The free States had 176 electoral votes, while the slave States had but 120, 
when Fremont was nominated in 1856 with great, enthusiasm, it seemed not 
improbable that he might carry every non-slave-holding State. The cry of dis- 
union was at once raised. Fillmore said in a speech at Albany: "We are treading 
upon the brink of a volcano that is liable to burst forth at any moment and over- 
whelm the Nation." Senator Toombs wrote: "The election of Fremont would be 
the end of the Union, and ought to be." Governor Wise of Virginia, wrote: "Fre- 
mont's election would bring about a dissolution of the American Confederacy of 
States, inevitably." Senator Slidell, a trusted friend of Buchanan, wrote: "I do 
not hesitate to declare that if Fremont be elected the Union can not and ought 
not to be preserved." Senator Mason said that in such an event "but one course 
remains for the South — immediate, absolute, eternal separation." Northern men 
like Fillmore and Choate sounded the alarm and no doubt the fear of disunion 
had a powerful influence upon timid voters and contributed to the election of 
Buchanan. 

Immediately after the inauguration of Buchanan as President came the Dred 
Scott decision. The extension of slavery into the territories became the issue. 
The people of the North refused to accept the doctrines of Calhoun as enunciated 
by the pro-slavery Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln was nominated upon a plat- 
form which pronounced against interference with slavery in the States, and at 
the same time declared "That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own 
force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a 
dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instru- 
ment itself. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States 
is that of freedom— and we deny the authority of Congress, or a Territorial Legis- 
lature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of 
the United States." 

Of the 303 electoral votes cast in 1860 Lincoln received 180, Douglas 12, Breck- 
enridge 72 and Bell 39, giving Lincoln 57 over all. It was thus decreed that there 

10 



could be no further extension of slavery. Foreseeing the result, the Legislature 
of South Carolina was convened by proclamation of the Governor on November 5th, 
the day preceding the Presidential election. The first important step taken by the 
Legislature was to appropriate $100,000 to be expended by the Governor in the 
purchase of small arms and a battery of rifled cannon. On the 20th of December 
a convention held at Columbia passed an ordinance of secession. A like ordinance 
was passed on January 8th, by Alabama, by Mississippi on the 9th, by Georgia 
on the 19th, by Louisiana on the 25th, and by Texas on February 24th. The people 
of North Carolina voted down a convention to consider the question of secession, 
but the Legislature called a convention which on May 21 st passed an Ordinance of 
Secession without submitting it to a vote of the people. Other States followed. 

Among the members of Buchanan's Cabinet were John B. Floyd, Secretary of 
War, who transferred 115,000 muskets from Northern arsenals to the South, 
besides cannon and other military stores, to be promptly seized by the secession 
authorities, Howell Cob, Secretary of the Treasury, chosen presiding ofBcer of the 
First Confederate Congress, Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, afterwards 
charged with promoting a plot to free Confederate prisoners and to burn New 
York and other Northern cities. The President in his annual message Decem- 
ber 4, 1860, while not conceding the right of secession, declared that "the 
Constitution had not delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into sub- 
mission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn from the 
Confederacy." He suggested an amendment to the Constitution, to recognize the 
right of property in slaves in the States where it existed; to protect this right 
in the territories until they were admitted with or without slavery; a recognition 
of the right of the master to have his escaped slave delivered up to him, and 
declaring all unfriendly State laws impairing this right, unconstitutional. I now 
record the most humiliating fact in the political history of our country. A pro- 
posed amendment to the Constitution was actually adopted by a two-thirds vote of 
both Houses, as follows: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which 
will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any 
State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to 
labor or service by the laws of any State." It was thus proposed to establish 
slavery forever by extinguishing" all power to abolish or interfere with it. Could 
abject subserviency to the slave power go further? It should be remembered that 
this action was taken after the secession of South Carolina and the appropriation 
of $100,000 to purchase arms. 

After the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln came the assault upon Fort Sumter and 
actual war. It is due to ourselves and to our children that the facts of history 
should not be distorted. That our foes were the bravest of the brave we freely 
admit, but that the Union was saved entirely by brute force and overwhelming 
numbers we deny, and the verdict of history will sustain the contention. 

General Grant, in his Memoirs, written as he calmly awaited death at Mount 
McGregor, said: "There has always been a great conflict of opinion as to the 
number of troops engaged in every battle, or all important battles, fought between 
the sections, the South magnifying the number of the Union troops engaged and 
belittling their own. Northern writers have fallen, in many instances, into the 
same error. I have often heard gentlemen, who were thoroughly loyal to the 
Union, speak of what a splendid fight the South had made and successfully con- 
tinued for four years before yielding, with their twelve million people against our 
twenty, and of the twelve, four being colored slaves, non-combatants. I will add 
to their argument. We had many regiments of brave and loyal men, who volun- 

11 



teered under great difficulty from the twelve million belonging to the South. But 
the South had rebelled against the National Government. It was bound by no con- 
stitutional restrictions. The whole South was a military camp. The occupation 
of the colored people was to furnish supplies for the army. Conscription was 
resorted to early, and embraced every male from the age of 18 to 45, excluding 
only those physically unfit to serve in the field, and the necessary number of civil 
officers of State and intended national government. The old and physically dis- 
abled furnished a good portion of these. The slaves, the non-combatants, one- 
third of the whole, were required to work in the field without regard to sex, and 
almost without regard to age. Children from the age of eight years could and 
did handle the hoe; they were not much older when they began to handle the 
plough. The four million of colored non-combatants were equal to more than 
three times their number in the North, age for age, and sex for sex, in supplying 
food from the soil to support armies. Women did not work in the fields in the 
North, and children attended school. In the South no opposition was allowed to 
the government which had been set up and which would have become real and 
respected if the rebellion had been successful. No rear had to be protected, all 
troops in service could be brought to the front to contest every inch of ground 
threatened with invasion. The press of the South, like the people who remained 
at home, were loyal to the Southern cause. In the North the press was free up 
to the point of open treason. The citizen could entertain his views and express 
them. Troops were necessary in the Northern States to prevent prisoners from 
the Southern Army from being released by outside force, armed and set at large 
to destroy by fire our Northern cities. Plans were formed by Northern and 
Southern citizens to burn our cities, to poison the water supplying them, to spread 
infection by importing clothing from infested regions, to blow up our river and 
lake streams — regardless of the destruction of innocent lives. The copperhead 
disreputable portion of the press magnified rebel successes and belittled those of 
the Union Army. It was with a large following, an auxiliary to the Confederate 
Army. The North would have been much stronger with a hundred thousand of 
these men in the Confederate ranks and the rest of their kind thoroughly subdued, 
as the Union sentiment was in the South, than we were as the battle was fought. 
As I have said, the whole South was a military camp. The colored people, four 
million in number, were submissive, and worked in the field and took care of the 
families while the able-bodied white men were at the front fighting for a cause 
destined to defeat. The cause was popular, and was enthusiastically supported by 
the young men. The conscription took all of them. Before the war was over, 
further conscription took those between 18 and 14 years of age as junior reserves, 
and those between 45 and 60 as senior reserves. It would have been an offense, 
directly after the war, and perhaps it would be now, to ask any able-bodied man 
in the South, who was between the ages of 14 and 60 at any time during the war 
whether he had been in the Confederate Army. He would assert that he had, or 
account for his absence from the ranks. Under such circumstances it is hard to 
conceive how the North should have such a superiority in force in every battle 
fought. I know they did not. It is safe to say that more than half the National 
Army was engaged in guarding lines of supplies, or were on leave, sick or in 
hospital, or on detail which prevented their bearing arms. Then, again, large 
forces were employed where no Confederate Army confronted them. I deem it 
safe to say that there were no large engagements where the National numbers 
compensated for the advantage of position and entrenchment occupied by the 
enemy." 

12 



On the Confederate monument at Austin, Texas, is the following inscription, 
giving the strength of the Federal and Confederate Armies: 

Number of Men Enlisted. 

In Confederate Armies 600,000 

In Federal Armies 2,859,132 

Losses from all Causes. 

Confederate 437,000 

Federal 485,216 

It appears that the above statement of the Confederate forces engaged is based 
upon an estimate by Dr. Joseph Jones, a Confederate surgeon, who in 1869 pub- 
lished a pamphlet in which he said: "The available Confederate force, capable of 
active service in the field, did not during the entire war exceed 600,000." He 
qualifies this with the statement that his "calculation is only an approximation." 
This estimate has apparently been accepted by the Southern people as a demon- 
strated historical fact, inscribed upon their monuments and taught in histories to 
their children. As the military population of the seceding States according to the 
census of 1860 was nearly 1,000,000 — that is, between the ages of eighteen and 
forty-five — and this number was largely augmented during the four years by boys 
reaching the military age, they evidently fail to appreciate the reflection upon 
the patriotism and manhood of the South implied by such an estimate. We who 
met Southern men on the battlefield know that they did not in great numbers shirk 
military duty or skulk in swamps to avoid conscription, but that they manfully 
took their places in the ranks and fought with heroic bravery to the bitter end. 

In 1900 Colonel Thomas L. Livermore, an able, fair-minded historical student, 
published a book from official and all other available sources, showing the strength 
and losses of both armies, and I believe that his conclusions are substantially 
correct. He gives in round numbers the total of those living in 1861 in the seceded 
States, according to the United States Census reports of 1860, who came within 
the terms of the conscription acts, as 1,269,000. After adding the male whites from 
10 to 12 years v.'ho became liable to conscription during the four years, and making 
deductions for exemptions for all causes, he estimates the numbers as regularly 
enrolled and who took up arms and served in the Confederate Army as 1,234,000. 
Those who escaped service in North Carolina and Tennessee were offset against 
those who joined the Confederate Army from the border States. He gives the 
number on a basis of three years' service as 1,082,119; number of enlistments in the 
Union Army, i. e., names on the rolls, 2,898,304. Of this number probably 90 per 
cent of the 91,816 three months men, who enlisted in April, 1861, re-enlisted and 
were counted twice. Over 200,000 re-enlisted in veteran regiments, the Veteran 
Reserve Corps and Hancock's Veteran Corps, and were counted twice and many 
three times. There were 120,000 emergency men and militia called out in 1863, 
who served from two to three weeks. There were 1,580,000 whose term of service 
was from two weeks to fourteen months. Reduced to a three years basis, the 
number in the Union Army was 1,556,678. There were more than 100,000 enlist- 
ments in the Union Army of boys of 15 years and younger. 

A critical study of the various campaigns of the war will fully justify the con- 
clusion of General Grant "that there were no large engagements where the National 
number compensated for the advantage of position and entrenchment occupied by 
the enemy." In bravery there was no superiority on either side, and the respect 
resulting from the demonstration of this fact has been most potent in the elimina- 
tion of bitterness between the two sections. 

13 



The inevitable conflict, unprecedented in magnitude and destructiveness, ensued. 
As Mr. Stephens foretold, the South was desolated by the demon of war, her fields 
of waving harvest were trodden down by the foe, her temples of justice laid in 
ashes, but there has survived a fairer, more prosperous South. In our campaigns 
we saw millions of acres of worn-out, abandoned land. Intelligent agriculture has 
taken the place of the wasteful methods of slavery days, free labor is more profitable 
than that of slavery. The bone of contention has been removed. The paradox of 
our republic proclaiming freedom to mankind and standing alone among the 
nations in legalizing and upholding slavery, no longer exists. We did not realize at 
the time that slavery was the real issue, but it was that which brought thousands 
of foreigners to fight in our ranks, rt was a realization of this fact which impelled 
the men, who, years ago, in the presence of many companions of the Loyal Legion 
and comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic, to dedicate at Edinburgh, Scot- 
land, a magnificent bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln, on the base of which is the 
figure of a slave with broken shackles, and upon the pedestal the inscription, 
"Erected by Scotchmen who served in the Armies of the United States for the 
preservation of the Union, 1861-65." It was this that caused the great mass of the 
English people, including thousands of workers in the cotton mills of Manchester, 
starving though they were, to remain steadfast in their sympathy for the Union 
cause, although the aristocracy hoped to see the Union destroyed. 

Another war has been waged, not of conquest, but in the interest of human 
liberty. As a result, possessions beyond the sea have fallen to us. We retain 
them, not for exploitation, but for the betterment of their people; and when the 
time shall come that they are competent for self-government, it will be given them, 
as it was to the Cubans. We have thus instituted a policy of altruism hitherto 
unknown in diplomacy, which will, let us hope, supplant the old rule of savagery 
that "might makes right." Deep in our hearts should we be thankful that we con- 
tributed as best we could to save our beloved republic for so glorious a destiny. 

Great problems here as elsewhere remain to be solved, but the toilsome evolu- 
tion of the race is towards ultimate justice, and those of us who were so fortunate 
as to participate in the momentous events of the last half century, may, as we 
descend to the land of shadows, see in the horizon of the future the glow of brighter 
days for humanity. 



14 



W60 



i 



